it is important to understand what lifting the debt ceiling is all about. it's to provide the federal government the ability to pay for bills and obligations already owing, already owing under the law. and so if the federal government were to wake up one day and decide not to pay those bills it would be like any of us getting up one day after having gone out and bought things on a credit card and saying, you know what, we bought those things but we're not going to pay for them. and every cent of those obligations has been voted on previously by congress over the years. which is why people say so clearly, don't mess around with the public debt because -- and the u.s. debt because it would have a very negative impact on our economy and on the world economy. now, tom mentioned that nobody's suggesting we not pay the "public" debt. that qualification is important here because earlier the numbers you used for the u.s. debt which was $16 trillion. the public debt is a little over $11 trillion. that is the debt we owe to bondholders. there are many of our republic